SQL Server 2017 Integration Services Cookbook

This chapter will cover the basics of how to install SQL Server 2016 to properly go through the examples in this book. The version of SQL Server used through out this book is the Developer edition of SQL Server 2016. It's available for free as long as you subscribe to Visual Studio Dev Essentials.

Following are the steps to download and install SQL Server 2016.

How to do it...

1. Open your browser and paste this link: https://www.visualstudio.com/dev-essentials/. The following page appears in your browser:

2. Click on Sign in visible at the right (top) to log in Visual Studio Dev Essentials. If you don't have an existing subscription, you can create one by clicking on the Join or access now button in the middle of the page, as shown in the following screenshot:

3. You are directed to the My Information page. Click on My Benefits at the top of the page to access the download section as shown in the following screenshot:

4. Click on the Download link in the Microsoft SQL Server Developer Edition tile as highlighted in the following screenshot:

5. This will redirect you to the SQL Server 2016 Developer Edition page. Click on the green arrow to start downloading the ISO file as shown in the following screenshot:

6. Due to its pretty large size, the file may take some time to download. The following screenshot is shows 44% done and 10 seconds left to download. This is due to the fact that the file is being downloaded on an Azure VM. It might take longer for you to download it. Depending on your browser, you should see the file downloading as in the following screenshot:

7. Don't mount the ISO file for now. We have to install an external component described in the next section before we proceed with the installation of SQL Server.

Java Runtime Engine (JRE) is required for PolyBase installations. SQL Server PolyBase is the technology that allows data integration from other sources other than SQL Server tables. PolyBase is used to access data stored in Hadoop File System (HFS) or Windows Azure Storage Blob (WASB).

As you will see later in this book, SSIS can now interact with these types of storage natively but having PolyBase handy can save us valuable time in our ETL.

How to do it...

1. To download JRE, follow this link: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html . You will see the screen shown in the following screenshot:

This directs you to the Java SE Download at Oracle.

2. Click the download link in the JRE section as shown in the following screenshot:

3. You must accept the license agreement to be able to select a file to download. Select Accept License Agreement as indicated in the following screenshot:

4. Since SQL Server 2016 only exists in a 64-bit version, download the 64-bit JRE. The version of Java SE runtime environment might be different from the one show in the screenshot, which is the one available at the time this book was written:.

5. Once downloaded, launch the installer. Click on Run as shown in Edge browser. Otherwise, go to your Downloads folder and double-click on the file you just downloaded (jre-8U102-windows-x64.exe in our case); you will see the following window:

6. The Oracle JRE installation starts. Click on Install. The following screen appears. It indicates the progress of the JRE installation.

7. Once the installation is completed, click on Close to quit the installer:

You are now ready to proceed to install SQL Server 2016. We'll do that in the next section.

This section will go through the installation of SQL Server engine, which will host the database objects used throughout this book.

These are the features available for SQL Server setup:

How to do it...

1. The first step is to open the ISO file that you downloaded from the Microsoft Visual Studio Dev Essentials website as described in the SQL Server 2016 download recipe. If you're using Windows 7, you'll need to extract the ISO file into a folder. Third-party file compression utilities such as WinRAR, WinZip, or 7-Zip (and there are many more) can handle ISO file decompression. The setup files will be uncompressed in the folder of your choice. In other versions of Windows such as Windows 8.1, Windows 10, or Windows Server 2012 and beyond, simply double-click on the ISO file that you have downloaded previously and a new drive will appear in Windows Explorer.
2. Double-click on the file named Setup.exe to start the SQL Server installation utility. The features we're going to install are as follows:
   • New SQL Server stand-alone installation or adding features to an existing installation: This will install a local instance (service) of SQL Server on your PC
   • SQL Server Management Tools: The tools used to create, query, and manage SQL Server objects
   • Install SQL Server Data Tools: This contains Visual Studio templates to develop and deploy SQL Server databases, integration services packages, analysis service cubes, and reporting services

3. From the installation utility, select the New SQL Server stand-alone installation... option as shown in the following screenshot. A new SQL Server setup window opens.

4. The Product Key page allows us to specify an edition to install. Since we're going to use the free Developer Edition, click Next to go to the next page, as shown in the following screenshot:

5. Accept the license terms and click Next to go to the next page, as shown in the following screenshot:

6. In this step, the SQL Server setup will check for product updates and will integrate itself into Windows update checks that are done regularly on your machine. This step is not mandatory but it's better to use the latest code. Check Use Microsoft Update... and click Next, as shown in the following screenshot:

7. Some updates might be found during setup. You can get more information on these updates by clicking the link in the More Information column. Click Next to install the updates, as shown in the following screenshot:

8. This step simply checks to make sure that the latest version of SQL Server is installed. Click Next once the setup files are installed, as shown in the following screenshot:

9. SQL Server setup will check several rules to ensure that the computer where we want to install it is setup properly. You might get a warning due to Windows firewall rules. This tells you that the port (1433 by default) is not open and SQL Server won't be available from outside your PC. Don't worry about it. Since we'll be using SQL Server from our PC only, we do not need to open any ports for now. Click Next to advance to the feature selection page, as shown in the following screenshot:

10. Select all features checked in the preceding screenshot and click Next, as shown in the following screenshot:

11. Instance configuration allows to specify a name for the SQL Server service. This is done by selecting the Named instance radio button. Since we'll only use one SQL Server instance, leave Default instance selected and click Next, as shown in the following screenshot:

12. This page allows SQL Server to be part of a PolyBase scale out group. Since we're only setting up SQL Server PolyBase to be used by one instance, leave the default Use this SQL Server as standalone PolyBase-enabled instance and click Next, as shown in the following screenshot:

13. Now for server configuration. This step allows us to specify distinct or specific service accounts. Since we're installing SQL Server on a single development machine, we'll use the default accounts, as shown in the following screenshot:

14. Click on the Collation tab as highlighted on the preceding screenshot. The default collation used by SQL server is SQL Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS. This is a legacy collation. The choice of the collation is important for character string columns. The latest (fewer bugs) collation is Latin1_General_100. The last characters CI and AS are for case-insensitive and accent-sensitive, respectively.
15. We'll change the collation defaults. Click Customize... at the end of SQL Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI, as shown in the following screenshot:

16. As stated previously, we'll use the Windows collation designator Latin1_General_100. Uncheck Accent-sensitive. This allows SQL Server to sort character columns without using accentuated characters. For example, suppose that our application has a FirstName column and we have the following first names:
    • Joel
    • Joël

17. If we query SQL Server filtering on FirstName = 'Joel' with the Accent-sensitive collation option, we end up retrieving the value Joel only. If we do not select the Accent-sensitive collation option, we will get both values.
18. Click OK when done to return to the previous screen. We'll do the same for analysis services; click Customize... to customize analysis service collation, as shown in the following screenshot:

19. Again, choose Latin1_General_100 in Collation designator and uncheck the Accent-sensitive checkbox. Click OK to return to the previous screen. Click on Next, as shown in the following screenshot:

20. This will direct you to the following screen. For the database engine configuration, we'll use Mixed Mode to allow us to use SQL Server logins and Windows logins. The default authentication is Windows authentication mode, which is more secure than SQL Server authentication because it uses the Kerberos security protocol, password, and account lockout policies, and password expiration. Make sure you use strong passwords for SQL Server logins. By default, password policy, password expiration, and user must change password at next login are turned on also for SQL Server login. You should not disable the password policy and the password expiration. Select the Mixed Mode radio box and enter a password for the SA account. Click on Add Current User as shown in the screenshot to add your Windows account as an administrator of the instance. You'll have all rights on it. Click Next, which will direct you to the Analysis Services Configuration window, as shown in the following screenshot:

21. For analysis services configuration, the Server Mode we'll use is Tabular Mode and again click on Add Current User as shown in the following screenshot to add your Windows account as an administrator of the service. Click Next.

22. For the Reporting services configuration, leave the default values and click Next, as shown in the following screenshot:

23. We're finally ready to install. Click Install to start the installation process, as shown in the following screenshot:

24. The following screenshot shows the installation progress:

25. Once the installation is complete, you get the following screen:

We're done. We just installed SQL Server 2016! In the next section, we'll install SQL Server Management Studio.

Note

The number, the order, and the appearance of the setup screens change slightly with every version of SQL Server, or even with a service pack. If you encounter a new screen not mentioned here, just use the default settings and proceed with the installation.

SQL Server Management Studio is a separate download from SQL Server. This program will allow us, among other things, to create database objects and query SQL Server. Without this tool, we wouldn't be able to manage SQL Server databases easily.

How to do it...

1. To download and install SQL Server Management Studio, click on Install SQL Server Management Tools, as shown in the following screenshot:

2. The SSMS download page opens in your browser. Click Download SQL Server Management Studio (the latest version) to start the download process. Once downloaded, run the installation as shown in the following screenshot:

3. Click Install, as shown in the following screenshot:

4. This will direct you to the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio installation screen as follows. The installation is in progress; it may take several minutes to complete.

5. Click Close to close the installation wizard, as shown in the following screenshot:

The last part of our SQL Server 2016 setup is to install SQL Server Data Tools. This will install a Visual Studio Shell that contains BI templates necessary for the following:

How to do it...

1. From the SQL Server 2016 setup utility, click on SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT). This will open the Download SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) download page in your browser as shown in the following screenshot:

Here, there are two choices:

Install SSDT only: This is the simplest scenario. It only installs SSDT and a development shell.

Install Visual Studio and SSDT: You choose this if you plan to use source control inside Visual Studio or when you want to implement different types of development (.NET, Python, and so on) such as SSIS/SSAS/SSRS development. Since we'll talk about custom components in this book, we'll install Visual Studio Community Edition. This version is free for individuals.

2. Click on the Download Visual Studio Community 2015 link to download the Visual Studio installer.
3. Once downloaded, click on Run to launch the Visual Studio installer.
4. Accept the default installation type and click Install to start the installation process. This will give you the following window:

5. Once the installation is completed, since we haven't installed SSDT, don't launch Visual Studio yet. Close this window. We'll install SQL Server Data Tools first. Return to the browser window and click Download SQL Server Data Tools for Visual Studio 2015 as shown in the following screenshot:

6. This will direct you to the SSDT download screen shown as follows:

7. From the browser page that opens, choose English (United States). The SSDT setup executable file download starts. Since it's a small file, it takes only a few seconds to download. Once the download completes, click Run or double-click on the newly downloaded file to start SSDT installation. Accept the defaults and click Next to proceed to the next step, as shown in the following screenshot:

8. Accept the license agreement by checking the I agree to the license terms and conditions and click Install, as shown in the following screenshot:

9. The SSDT installer will download the necessary files and proceed to the installation, as shown in the following screenshot:

10. Once the installation completes, you might have to restart your computer. If that's the case, restart it, as shown in the following screenshot. Once that's done, look for SQL Server Data Tools in your Start menu and launch it.

11. From the File menu, select New Project. Once the New Project window appears, you will see Business Intelligence in the project templates, as shown in the following screenshot:

12. Close SSDT; we're done with it for now.

SQL Server Management Studio has been installed in this chapter in the SQL Server Management Studio installation recipe. We'll now test whether we're able to connect to our local instance.

How to do it...

1. Look for SQL Server Management Studio in your Start menu and launch it.
2. Once the application opens, you should see your PC's name in the Server Name field. Click on Connect. SSMS will now connect to your local SQL Server instance, as shown in the following screenshot:

3. You are now able to connect to your local SQL Server instance, and we're now ready to begin work! You will get the following screen: